On the same day it announced that Tesla CEO Elon Musk will join the company’s board of directors, Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) said on Tuesday that it will begin testing a new edit tool in the coming months, surprising users.
Jay Sullivan, Twitter’s head of consumer products, stated in a tweet that the company has been working on an edit option since last year, describing it as “the most requested Twitter feature for many years.”
The announcement comes as Twitter undergoes a bigger makeover, with Musk becoming the company’s largest shareholder and joining the board of directors after challenging the social media platform’s commitment to free speech on April Fools Day last week.
Musk began polling Twitter followers about an edit button after unveiling his 9.2 percent stake in the company on Monday. As of 6:30 p.m. EST, the poll has received over 4.2 million votes, with 73.5 percent in favour of the feature.
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal urged users to “vote wisely” on Monday, however the firm later emphasised that the poll was not the inspiration for the edit button.
“Without time limits, constraints, and transparency about what has been changed, Edit might be used to modify the record of the public conversation,” Sullivan wrote on Twitter.
Before publishing Edit, he stated that the company will actively seek “criticism and adversarial thinking.”
According to Twitter, it will begin testing functionality within its Twitter Blue Labs paid subscription service in the coming months to “learn what works, what doesn’t, and what’s imaginable.”
Twitter Blue users have exclusive access to premium features and app changes for a monthly subscription.
